2 – What Gobbles Beneath
What Gobbles Beneath
By Tucker Burns
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NEW YORK — Many New Yorkers have grown accustomed to the shrill ringing of cell phones during overpriced movies, and the moving hazard of chatty drivers talking on cell phones while they swerve carelessly through traffic. However, cell phones presented a new and truly unpredictable danger to society last week when a popular new brand of satellite phone accidentally attracted the attention of an ancient monster that lives beneath the surface of the island of Manhattan.
The monster, which was known to the Wappinger Indians as oosbee unaygil gad skil (translation: “little ugly dirt monster”), has likely lived in the soil of the city for thousands of years. The O.U.G.S. was made of cancer cells and thrived on radiation through a process known as angiogenesis. It is conjectured that the massive amount of radiation generated by the recently recalled Yamaguchi 9000 cell phone was enough to wake the monster from its slumber. Whenever anyone used one of the new prototype cell phones, the specific frequencies of radiation it emitted attracted the tentacled tumor. Because the “cancer monster” needed radiation in order to survive, it would engulf the phone — along with the person holding it.
The monster’s first confirmed victim was media mogul Rupert Blackstone, an investor in Yamaguchi Wireless Corp. and an owner of a Yamaguchi 9000 prototype. “He was sitting in the park talking on his phone, and then he was gone. Poof,” said Walevska Poliskova, an East European model who describes herself as a “close friend” of Blackstone. Analysis of Blackstone’s fatal phone call later confirmed that he was “slurped” by the monster while ordering his broker to divest his portfolio of all Yamaguchi stock.
Dr. Ernest Wyler, chief researcher on the Yamaguchi 9000 project, was also one of the creature’s victims. “He knew the phone’s radiation was dangerous, but who would have expected this?” asked a not-so-high-ranking Yamaguchi employee, who requested anonymity. “I thought the worst-case scenario would be that Yamaguchi users would start glowing. Or if things got really bad, maybe someone would have a three-eyed baby. Boy, was I wrong.”
The final victim of the monster’s appetite for radiation was Frank Bailey, president of Yamaguchi Wireless. The monster attacked Bailey in the basement of his own company’s Manhattan headquarters. “He turned on a bunch of the phones, and the thing just busted through the floor,” recalled the Yamaguchi insider. “It just slurped him down like a Jell-O™ shot. Actually, it was more like a Jell-O™ shot slurping down a person.”
Luckily, well-prepared Chronicle staffers were on hand to destroy the cancerous monster using chemotherapy drugs.
“Once we pumped it full of chemicals the thing went into remission and exploded,” said Wes Freewald, the Chronicle’s senior staff photographer and ad hoc mercenary oncologist. “A little too late for Mr. Bailey, I guess, but what can you do?”
“What Gobbles Beneath”
Written by Silvio Horta
Directed by Adam Davidson
Guest Starring:
ELAINE HENDRIX . . . . . . . . as Kristen Martin